THUNDERBOLTS 151 



surviving relatives of the belemnites, the squids or cala- 

 maries of the Atlantic, by the appropriate name of sea- 

 arrows. 



Many other natural or artificial objects have added 

 their tittle to the belief in thunderbolts. In the Hima- 

 layas, for example, where awful thunderstorms are always 

 occurring as common objects of the country, the torrents 

 which follow them tear out of the loose soil fossil bones 

 and tusks and teeth, which are universally looked upon as 

 lightning-stones. The nodules of pyrites, often picked up 

 on beaches, with their false appearance of having been 

 melted by intense heat, pass muster easily with children 

 and sailor folk for the genuine thunderbolts. But the 

 grand upholder of the belief, the one true undeniable 

 reality which has kept alive the thunderbolt even in a 

 wicked and sceptical age, is, beyond all question, the 

 occasional falling of meteoric stones. Your meteor is an 

 incontrovertible fact ; there is no getting over him ; in the 

 British Museum itself you will find him duly classified 

 and labelled and catalogued. Here, surely, we have the 

 ultimate substratum of the thunderbolt myth. To be 

 sure, meteors have no kind of natural connection with 

 thunderstorms ; they may fall anywhere and at any time ; 

 but to object thus is to be hypercritical. A stone that falls 

 from heaven, no matter how or when, is quite good enough 

 to be considered as a thunderbolt. 



Meteors, indeed, might very easily be confounded with 

 lightning, especially by people who already have the full- 

 blown conception of a thunderbolt floating about vaguely 

 in their brains. The meteor leaps upon the earth suddenly 

 with a rushing noise ; it is usually red-hot when it falls, by 

 friction against the air ; it is mostly composed of native 

 iron and other heavy metallic bodies ; and it does its best 

 to bury itself in the ground in the most orthodox and 



